Hi!
On Twitter I was pointed to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia
This is amazing. I think John Oliver should make a segment "Wikipedia Deletionism - how is this still a thing?"
I mean, is this a failure of Wikipedia community governance? Reading about this seems deletionists are just a vocal minority who benefit from the fact that deletion is much stronger action than keeping things. Destruction is always easier than creation.
There are 1536 inclusionists just on English Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inclusionist_Wikipedians
And 280 deletionists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Deletionist_Wikipedians
So, how is this still a thing? How can this be put to a vote and finally move on? What is Wikipedia's governance process here? Does Wikipedia has something like https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ ?
Mitar
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Mitar mmitar@gmail.com wrote:
Hi!
Thank you for your responses.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Brill Lyle wp.brilllyle@gmail.com wrote:
Please include your user name and the name of the article you were working on. Without any context it's impossible to help you. Thankfully I was able to dig and find the page, etc. But include identifying info if you want help / resolution.
I didn't want to include this information because I didn't want to make it about my issue in particular. I wanted to give feedback and discuss principles behind my experience.
I otherwise had good experience editing Wikipedia. Other editors were constructive and often with patience helped me learn how to improve the content and related rules of Wikipedia, which also seemed reasonable. But this rule I do not get and cannot relate to, thus I am bringing it here.
I read that Wikipedia is trying hard to get new editors and this is why I am sharing this story here. Because from all my experience this one is the most problematic. It really pushes you off.
And it is pretty reasonable that it is problematic. Now that most clearly "notable" articles have been already written the one which are left will be increasingly more and more in the "gray zone". And increasingly local, specialized, where such mistakes might be common.
Maybe this policy for notability and significance had its historic place. It focused the community on the core set of articles, improving the quality of existing articles and created a name for Wikipedia. But I think maybe it is time that it is relaxed and a new level of articles is invited in. As I said, a warning could be used to tell readers that they are reading such a new article.
(Oh, and please improve talk pages, that way of communicating is also a mess, but that one I can understand, it is a technical legacy. It is cumbersome, but I can understand it. But it does influence other issues then, like this one when you have to discuss something about Wikipedia. Why Wikipedia does not simply use some issue-management system where people could be opening issues for articles and other people and have conversation through that? It would also allow much better statistics of how many issues were satisfactory resolved, for example, for all sides.)
Discussion (with reason): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG#Please_remove_the_tag_from_Polig...
Yes, it is clear that the editor who deleted it does not understand local importance of the article. They could read the news articles I cited and might get a better picture.
The issue is here that while new editors can edit pages, see tags to improve sources and so on, that is all helpful. But once a page is deleted, they are pushed off and cannot do anything anymore. I just started with the article. I could improve it through time, get more information in why it is important and so on. But once it is deleted nothing of this is not possible. I have to go around and find ways how to object to this, and I have no idea how to do that. (This is also why I am writing to such general list like this.)
I don't have rights to view the deleted article, but if someone who does moves it to your sandbox or a draft space you could work on it there, and I would be happy to take a quick look at it / try to help.
But the problem is systemic. It does not matter if we resolve it for this particular page. Also, if a page is in my sandbox then it is only on me to fix it and improve it. If it is its dedicated namespace then others can help edit it because they can find it. This is the whole power of Wikipedia, that it is not that one person has to write the whole article, but that multiple people can collaborate.
Maybe a solution would be that an article can exist under its namespace and link then to this sandbox version saying that article is still in development. In general Wikipedia could be just an directory of pages, some could be edited in Wikipedia and some could be linked elsewhere, until they are seen as worthy of Wikipedia.
The structures you propose exist, but if you don't educate yourself on procedures and policies and are a casual editor, you might not be aware of them. Not trying to be mean or harsh here but I appreciate your passion and thoughts and want you to know there are solutions in place....
I followed instructions which were presented to me in the speedy deletion tag: I opened a talk page for an article and objected to deletion. The result was that next day the article was deleted without any discussion.
What structures exist here?
I am talking about structures which would prevent deletion, and structures which would help editors explain local significance of articles. Structures which might exist to revert deletion are too late. Editors might not return anymore.
The best solution I've found if as a newish user you are wanting to create new articles (as a short stub) is to do it in your Sandbox and make sure you have at least 5 (or even 10) very solid citations.
I had citations. It seems it was not enough.
Have a friendly editor take a look at the article before attempting to move it to the main space.
Friendly editor? How am I supposed to find one? I do not want to be harsh, but I am here to write content, not to mingle with other editors and socialize. I have enough other things in my life. I can understand that for some editors this is their online social space/forum and they know each other. But for me is something where I get to occasionally, I want to fix a thing I care about, and I move on. If I find trash on the floor I pick it up and carry it to the nearest thrash can. I do not want to interact with city utilities system or talk to supervisors.
(BTW, talking to a friendly editor comes back to the issue of really strange talk pages. Probably all you got used to them, but they are really a mess.)
It is critical you use the citations to establish notability. Not everything is notable, and especially if the Wiki-en audience isn't knowledgeable of the subject matter, it's even more important.
I did that. Of course, citations were to Slovenian news articles in Slovenian, only one was in English. And this is why I started the Wikipedia article. To bring more international exposure to a local thing.
but their goal is to "protect" Wiki content, so....
Hm, protect from what? Existence? If content is true, why it needs protection? If content is not yet complete, guide it to being complete.
The IRC help channel ( http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-en-help) is also a great resource -- especially if it's a time zone issue.
BTW, you do realize that many of new people online and potential new editors are not familiar with IRC? Mailing list are already
On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 1:11 AM, carl hansen carlhansen1234@gmail.com wrote:
You have been hit by crossfire in the long running Inclusionist vs. Deletionist war.
Instead of waging war, could we open some discussion about middle group solutions? For example, what is wrong with having such pages tagged with "not an encyclopedia-grade article, possible lacking notability and/or significance" and move on? And then we can discuss the merits of that tag being applied to a particular article. Which is much less new-editor-scary than a warning "page is nominated for speedy deletion" and bam, deleted.
Has this ever been put up for a vote by the community?
Mitar